GiddyUp Junction

Tonite, the boys graduated from their first VBS program of the summer!

Since Sunday nite, they've been participating in the Giddyup Junction VBS at Mrs. Shana's church, Burnett Siding Missionary Baptist Church. They have had a BALL, and I have LOVED the incredible crafts they've brought home. The first nite, they painted rocks to look like cactuses; they also   made "WANTED" posters, and for the grand finale, they made mop horses, which was perfect, because ever since week started, Jones has been tying up and taking care of an imaginary horse. As soon as he got the mop horse, he told me his pretend horse died.

Ain't that a shame?

Here are the most memorable parts of the week:

1) I walked in on Tuesday nite and noticed "You'uns Prayer Wall." The kids had given their prayer requests, and the teacher had written them on the wall. I saw "People at St. Jude's" and immediately assumed Freddie'd made that request - he's been praying for the kids of St. Jude's ever since he heard about them during the Trike-a-Thon last month. I was thinking what a tender hearted little fella I am so proud to have. When I talked to him, he confirmed that he'd made that request. It wasn't ten seconds later that Jones told me Freddie had punched a little girl in the nose, because she kept cutting in line. That's pretty much the yin and the yang of Freddie Bear. He has the softest heart I have ever seen in a kid - but he's also has him limits when it comes to classroom etiquette.

We talked about the thousand reasons why hitting ANYONE - especially a girl! - was wrong, and Freddie was humbly remorseful ("I'm just sorry," he said with his head down). At bedtime, I was curious as to how hard he'd hit her (Jones said her nose bled. Freddie said it just "got red"), so I asked him. He very earnestly told me, "Like a baseball hard? I don't know. SHE knows. I don't know."

In retrospect, I guess it was a stupid question.

2) After the graduation ceremony and subsequent pizza supper, the boys went out to play on the church playground. Jeremy overheard a little girl ask Jones why his daddy walks like he does. Jones said, "He walks like he's got a sprained ankle," and then he did what Jeremy called a pretty spot-on imitation.

3) As Jeremy told me about the exchange, we commented about the abundance of gnats bedeviling us under the church's picnic pavilion. Later, as we drove him, Jones got whiny and said, "Mama, I feel like there's a bug in my ear." I'm on HIGH tick alert, so I pulled over as quickly as I could and looked. Sure enough, there WAS a bug in his ear. It wasn't a tick, thank God, but it was one of those gnats that'd been bothering Jeremy and me earlier in the nite.

So that was week one of VBS. I'm assuming there'll be a few more weeks of the same - our church hosts its VBS in mid-June, and I'm planning for them to attend at both of our lake churches (Oakwood at Hartwell and Mount Pleasant at Chatuge). They seem to really enjoy it - Freddie asked every nite, "Are we gonna play GAMES?!?" I think he loves the physical aspect of it, while Jones prefers the imagination component. I'll be honest: I love a couple of hours off, that churches up here serve DINNER before Bible school, and that the boys are hearing the Gospel over and over again and from different people, so it's a win all around!

Coffee Mugs & Quiet Times

I was about six seconds in to this morning's (attempt at a) Quiet Time when Freddie saw what I was doing. Before I could blink, there he stood at the kitchen table, saying, "I want to read my Bible, too."

Who am I to say no to THAT?

This has been happening more and more lately - in fact, it's pretty much guaranteed that, if the boys see me reading the Bible, they're gonna want to pull out their own (for some reason, Jones didn't come today; heathen). I've even bought them little monogrammed coffee mugs, because, like I drink coffee while I read, they want a mug of milk, which is exactly how I used to drink my milk, too.

At first, this interruption drove me crazy. I felt like the quality of MY Quiet Time was TANKING, as the entire ordeal inevitably snowballed into me begging the boys to be quiet before finally giving in and reading some variation of the Creation account.

Here recently, though, God has been changing my heart. He's showing me that this is the BEST habit I can teach them, and I should be SO GRATEFUL that they are picking it up. After all, "I have no greater joy than knowing my children walk in Truth," right?

RIGHT.

God's also showing me that He doesn't require the hour a day I used to be able to spend just with Him. He can speak just as loudly through three minute (re-)readings of the Creation account.

Turns out, that's a REALLY good thing.

Favorite Things

After we'd read a Bible story about Creation today, I asked Jones, "Of all the things that God made, which is do you like best?"

For his response, see the photo below.

Mama's little ladies' man has got good taste!

the B-I-B-L-E!

I was sitting in the den today, while the boys were playing in the playroom.

I overheard this conversation:

JONES: "'Beebullbeebull' spelllllllllsss???"
FREDDIE: "Bi-bull."
JONES: "That's right! That's right!"

They went through it MULTIPLE times in succession, basically repeating the song we sing together most often at lunch.

When things like this happen, it's always something of a catch-22. Once they KNOW I'm watching / listening, the spell is broken. The moment vanishes, evaporates into so many refrains of, "Mama this" and "Mama that." The flipside is, of course, that I SO WANT TO PRESERVE THESE MOMENTS, so I sat there, sorta wishing I had some kind of button on my earlobe that I could hit and record what I was hearing, but since I don't, I instead pressed my luck and snuck into the kitchen to get my camera.

Of course, they heard me, and the conversation they'd repeated immediately ceased. The best videos I could get were these where I kinda guided them through a recreation of what I'd heard earlier. It's not nearly as good as the real thing, but it's definitely better than nothing.

Jones's new song

In light of yesterday's new word, Jones learned a new song today:

Bi-ble time

Sunday mornings are kind of a wild card here at home. I hear that's a common first-day-of-the-week phenomenon. But for us, the tension is definitely tighter than at any other time.

We get up and do our normal thing, only instead of just Jeremy having to get dressed and out the door, all four of us have to get dressed and out the door, which is about as easy for me as getting every course of a meal ready simultaneously or having all eight rooms of the house clean at the same moment.

That's hard, y'all.

Today, though, things went way more easily than usual. After getting myself dressed, I went into Jones's room. He'd been in there by himself, sitting on the little wooden stool by his window, reading the "Read and Share Bible" we bought after my first prenatal appointment.

This is common. He loves books better than any other little boy I know, and I knew he knew it was a book and that we read it every nite, but I just figured that was all he knew and that he'd call it just any other "boch."

When I went in to his room, I said, "Come here, so I can get you dressed."  Very obediently (he's getting so much better about that; talk about an answer to prayer), he came right to the changing table, and as I changed him, he out of nowhere said, "Bi-ble."

Clear as anything.

"Bi-ble."

I guess it amazes me, because we don't really talk about it as the Bible. We say, "Let's read about Jesus," but I can't remember EVER saying, "Let's read your Bible."

So how'd he know?

Anyway, as I finished getting him dressed, we both kept repeating "Bi-ble," and when he was finished, he sat in a rocker to read some more. Here's a video of it; if you watch the whole thing, you'll hear "Bi-ble" for yourself.